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essay Blast
from the past
essay It would be safe to
assume that more than eighty percent of all publishing activity in Pakistan
— including textbooks which form a large chunk of it — happens in Urdu.
What follows is an attempt to see what constitutes the mainstream of Urdu
publishing today and identify some of its dominant trends that have their
roots in the history of the past 150 years or so. It was in the second half
of the nineteenth century that publishing of periodicals and books began in
Urdu and other vernaculars in the northern part of the subcontinent and it
had come into its own by the early twentieth century. Those who practiced
writing and publishing in Urdu in its early phase belonged almost exclusively
to two groups of society: Muslim shurafa who came from the so-called “ilmi
gharana” who had a traditional grounding in Farsi, Urdu and Arabic; and
Hindu savarnas who had adopted Farsi and Urdu for their intellectual
expression during the rule of Muslim kings. The latter were extraordinarily
active in the launching of Urdu periodicals and founding of publishing houses
for Urdu/Farsi books, but they were gradually elbowed out in the course of
the first half of the twentieth century and the former group established its
near-supremacy over not only the publishing activity but also the imagination
of the readers that came to consume Urdu publications. The Hindu upper-caste
writers, translators, compilers, editors and publishers, found their place in
the fast-expanding “Hindi public sphere” with its own characteristic
“nationalist” narrative which, incidentally, has been a subject of much
research and exploration lately. What can reasonably be
called an “Urdu public sphere” has not received as much attention of
social scientists as it deserved, and whatever research has been done on this
subject has hardly found its place in the public discourse in the
subcontinent, especially in what now constitutes Pakistan. It would therefore
be useful to look at some of the defining features of the two sides
—producers and consumers —of the Urdu publications: newspapers,
periodicals, books, pamphlets and so on. The Urdu writers, translators,
compilers, editors and publishers who, naturally, became pioneers of the new
technology of printing brought with them their traditional ancestral
knowledge which they supplemented with the new forms of knowledge that were
being introduced under the colonial set-up. Significantly, this class
of producers of print products included religious scholars as well, who found
faults with most things in the lived religion of South Asia and launched a
number of “reform” movements, each with its busy printing and publishing
side. However, the profession of
all these producers of reading material had undergone a basic change by the
middle of the nineteenth century in that they could no longer seek and find
patronage from the Muslim royalty and aristocracy — which had all but lost
its ability to provide patronage — but had to, at least in part, depend on
the new consumers of the newly introduced print products. These buyers and readers of
periodicals and books themselves were the products of the new economic and
social conditions of that era. They belonged mostly to middle castes whose
previous generations had had no connection with the business of knowledge and
they had acquired public education, as first-generation literates in many
cases, under the colonial system. More often than not, they were connected
for their living to the colonial administration (colonial army, police,
judiciary, revenue, post & telegraph, railways, public works, irrigation,
civic and healthcare systems and so on) either as employees or contractors of
various kinds. A smaller group was engaged in independent practice of
professions such as law, medicine, manufacturing, trade etc. Their attachment
to these new, non-traditional occupations had provided them the means to
patronise the new publishing activity as subscribers of Urdu newspapers and
periodicals and buyers of Urdu books. Given their economic and social
profile, this new, urban class was more likely to acquire a modern outlook
towards life as their Hindi counterparts arguably did. However, it is a great
irony of our history as a nation that they bought wholesale into the grand
revivalist narrative of the producers of Urdu print products of the
nineteenth and twentieth century. This narrative had an
historical side and a new-found geographic side to it. Historically, it
defined the South Asian Muslims on the assumption that they had conquered
India, the euphemism used for this was (and still remains) that “they came
to India.” A typical resume of the subcontinent Muslim history would begin
with the phrase: “jab mussalman Hindustan main aaye…” although nothing
could be further from truth as more than ninety percent Muslim communities
were local converts. Muslim farmers, farm-labourers, artisans (weavers,
blacksmiths, masons, carpenters and so on) and service-providers (barbers,
cooks, washerwomen, butchers, water-carriers, singers, dancers, village
maulvis, prostitutes etc.) were as likely to be conquerors as you or me or
our newspaper hawker. If anything, they were the ones who were, during the
past several centuries, conquered and converted. They were however told that
they had had dominant political power which they had lost and it was their
“national” duty to regain it in some form or another. The “nation,” in terms
of this revivalist project, came to be defined in such a way that it was not
limited by geographical considerations. As the same colonial era was marked
by an increased ease of communication with the outside world, the Urdu
writers quickly invented something called the “Muslim Ummah.” This
invention was supposed to have existed historically, obviously disregarding
all the reasonable historical evidence. Soon enough, by the turn of the
century, they had discovered on the international scene a dying “Muslim”
empire — the Ottoman Empire — which was, in the event, suffering its last
defeats in North Africa and the Balkans. It was soon turned into an
“international” cause – the “Khilafat Movement” — which could be
suitably used by the literary and political elites for gains which were
purely local. Several prominent Urdu papers, and a plethora of books and
booklets, were produced to serve this agenda and were received with
eagerness. As time went on, with other
communities in the subcontinent using the new systems of education and
publishing for improving their realistic understanding of their situation,
the Muslim communities kept on sliding down the dreamy slopes of revivalism
using the modern communication technologies. A vast body of Dastan fiction
was created to glorify and gloat over the real or imaginary conquests of real
or imaginary Muslim heroes. This led to the birth of the genre of Urdu
‘tareekhi’ fiction which flourished and gained new grounds of popularity
throughout the twentieth century, and continues to do so. Another important
literary development was the launch of the “Islamic” poetry of Akbar and
Hali, which suitably culminated in the works of Iqbal who went on to become
our ‘national’ poet, a typical ‘idea’ of whose poetry goes like this:
“sabaq phir parrh sadaqat ka, adalat ka, shujaat ka/ liya jaye ga tujh se
kaam dunya ki imamat ka.” Another significant genre
of Urdu writing was history and biography which, while firmly believing in
and further embellishing the above-mentioned narrative, did not think much of
the niceties of objectivity and rational analysis. This trend was to produce
not only a large and ever growing body of publications in Urdu, but the
“vision” it produced was to later on inform the policies of the
newly-gained “Islamic” state of Pakistan in the fields of education as
well as national security. The religious scholars of
the mid-nineteenth century onwards, on the other hand, while fully sharing
the “national” narrative as described above, found the cause of the
Muslim “decline” in the loss of “purity” of religion. They
conveniently forgot the fact that every proselytising religion has been seen
to take a local form, texture and colour when it reaches new geographical
areas having their particular cultural contexts. They went on to invent an
allegedly “pure” or “original” form of Islam, which could be the
“only” true form while all other forms took their followers up the street
of apostasy. For every big or small worldly issue, the moot question became
this: what does Islam say about it? Now, obviously, Islam said different
things to people belonging to different sects, which led to a feverish
activity of producing publications not just declaring but “proving” the
beliefs of the adversaries as “wrong.” This intolerant insistence on the
existence of “one and only” true form of Islam fiercely divided the
Muslim population into several sectarian groups — each declaring every
other sect as not just kafir (non-believer) but also wajib-ul qatl (fit to be
slaughtered) — and in turn devouring a particular brand of religious hate
literature. The modern day religious
“reformers” declared that the lived local Islam, which had taken several
centuries to develop to become what it did, was sinfully far from the one
they had discovered, and that, in their view, was the real cause of disaster.
This view was the basis for the launching of myriad so-called “reform”
movements — more influential ones being Deoband, Ahmadiya, Ahl-e Hadis and
Jamaat-e Islami — among whose activities production of propaganda reading
material enjoyed a prominent place. This kind of publications grew
exponentially. They have found and mobilised ever new local and foreign
resources and today form the bulk of Urdu publishing in the country. The
renewed and much increased interest in the ideology of Jihad since the late
1970s has given birth to an avalanche of Jihadi literature produced by
different Jihadi outfits that have become active both on the ground and on
the printing press. Interpreting the history of
early Islam in a highly innovative way, the makers of our national narrative
have chalked a clear, though rather unrealistic, path for us to follow: the
hijrat and founding of the state of Madina, the conquest of Makka, and the
subsequent conquest of one continent after another. This is the vision which
our state seems to have whole-heartedly internalised and adopted as the basis
of its policies. The first step has been taken in 1947, next we need to
conquer Kashmir and unfurl the ‘sabz hilali parcham’ on Delhi’s Red
Fort, and then we have the whole world to conquer and dominate. The usual
national goals of the “ordinary”states — such as trying to improve the
living conditions of their citizens — break no ice here. In no other way
can you explain the fact that an overpopulated nation of poor,
undernourished, illiterate, ill-treated people would find it suitable to
commit its scarce, precious resources to the construction of weapons of mass
destruction. A slight modification seems
to have occurred since the mid-1980s, when we apparently postponed the next
step in the plan in favour of gaining what is called “strategic depth” by
establishing our influence — and a government of our choice — in
Afghanistan, notwithstanding the possible aspirations of the Afghans. Also,
since some of us have come to the sad realisation that perhaps we had bitten
into the delicious burger of conquest of the world more than we were able to
chew, they have now settled to make their mark on the world as people who
could destroy, if not dominate, a large part of the world using ‘covert
action’ (which others call ‘terrorism’). This idea has also produced a
large quantity of reading material for its keen readers in the past few
years. It is true that a modern,
humanist, progressive trend has been strong in the field of creative
literature — particularly fiction — since at least the 1930s in Urdu, and
also that it has managed to produce works of great literary merit — in fact
it can be argued that nothing serving the grand revivalist narrative of the
South Asian Muslims has been able to match the progressive literature in
terms of literary finesse. The only possible exception is Iqbal’s poetry,
but it can be seen to have left no literary heirs, unless you wish to count
the creators of Jihadi naghmat (songs) currently filling the print and cyber
space as such. The fact is that all modern twentieth century Urdu poets worth
their salt have celebrated social values that are sharply at variance with
the “message” of Iqbal. However, this modern body of poetry and fiction
has existed on the margins and, faced with the onslaught of Urdu publishing
activity, including the significant component of textbook production; it has
had little social space and little influence. The revivalist publications of
various kinds, on the other hand, which should have been nothing more than a
lunatic fringe, have come to dominate the mainstream of publishing as well as
policy-making. So, this is mainly what we
— those of us who can afford the luxury, that is — continue to read: in
our textbooks as well as the bulk of other reading material. And the same
kind of stuff is increasingly dominating the Urdu cyberspace as well. Good
luck!
Blast
from the past Literary works,
particularly fiction, has always aimed at creating a fantasy for the reader
— a world distant from everyday life; a world purely based on imagination.
While the sea of literary works is endless and grows by the day, the
literature readers are exposed to in the status- quo is fairly “Urdu works that we grew
up reading have completely disappeared nowadays. Even authors like Louis
L’Amour, Zane Gray and classics by Charles Dickens and Jane Austen aren’t
given the same importance as they were when I was growing up,” says
Professor Syed Ali Haider. When asked about the reason for the disappearance
of these works from bookstores today Haider adds, “The works of these
writers haven’t lost their worth because of a lack of interest or popular
culture; rather good writers have come along as old ones have been forgotten.
There still isn’t a lack of good books.” Haider is an avid reader
and a die-hard fan of Louis L’Amour books. He happens to have collected all
of L’Amour’s one hundred seventy five books, which Haider proudly
displays in his library today, alongside the works of John Grisham, Tolkien
and Karen Armstrong. Haider is also of the opinion that popular culture may
have had an influence on the sort of literature that’s popular these days,
“When people of one age die out, so do their experiences and so does their
literature. The youth reads of the experiences from their own age as we once
did.” If there isn’t a lack of
good books, then why does the youth in particular only have its heads gripped
around the trilogies mentioned above The Hunger Games, The Lord
of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The
Game of Thrones have all been transformed into either movies or television
series. The visual representation of these books also adds to their
popularity, or in most cases draws their fans towards bookstores, so that
they could purchase a book with a plot as engrossing as the movie. Some
people find this to be an alarming trend. “Movies and visual adaptations
abolish reader response by giving the characters in the reader’s mind a
face and complexities often not present in the book itself. Movies also tend
to alter stories and events and on top that of they present a highly
simplistic version of characters, which takes away from the depth of the
story,” says Mehrunissa Sajjad, a student of English Literature and History
at the University of Oxford. Muhammad Mustafa, a Social
Sciences student at LUMS, on the contrary is of a different opinion. “While
I do accept that teenagers and the youth tend to prefer movies over books,
since movies are easier to watch and don’t consume the same amount of time;
for a true reader it only enhances the experience. After finishing a book and
then watching its visual adaptation one is able to draw a comparison between
the image they have in their head and the image depicted in the movie or the
television series. I recently finish Even though literature is
timeless, more often than not it’s age specific. Shehryar Sheikh an
undergraduate student at Harvard University agrees with this hypothesis. “I
like that most people of my generation grew up reading the Harry Potter
series, Enid Blyton and classics by Dickens. Different literature appeals to
different age groups. Moreover, literary classics still haven’t lost their
worth, and still hold unshakeable ground in literary spheres. What we
consider literary classics nowadays were not meant for the youth to begin
with. Who do you think Jane Austen was writing for? 15 year old boys?” Reading vocabulary matures
as we age. A reader’s journey kicks off with Ladybird books as toddlers and
grows to accommodate Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie and Charles
Dickens to name a few, as we grow. As teenagers we start exploring Coelho,
Picoult and some local writers like Shamsie and as we continue to age our
tastes differ from time to time. As young adults we are engrossed by the Game
of Thrones while through middle- age the philosophy classics by Ayn Rand
begin to inspire us and old age makes us drool over the spiritual lessons by
Rumi and some philosophical pieces by Aristotle. In the midst of all these
continuously changing consumer tastes and generation gaps, while we do tend
to read various authors at several stages in our life, it’s also okay to
question ourselves once in a while. Who knows, we might be forgetting a few
great authors and their everlasting works. caption The forgotten: Louis, Jane
and Charles.
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limited. With the growing influence of popular culture trends, works like The
Hunger Games, the ever-popular Harry Potter series, the Twilight Series and
the much recent Game of Thrones series dominate consumer choices and at a
certain degree, represent modern day literature, as we know it. Given such a
scenario one is bound to question: has the influence of popular culture on
literature undermined the great works from the past? 
?
Saima Qasim, a mother of three and an advocate of the Lahore High court, has
an answer. “Books like Harry Potter, the Hunger Games and whatever
your children read these days have indeed limited the scope of literature for
the youth today. Most of their popularity isn’t credited to their writers
rather it is credited to the advertisements and movies that centre around
these books.” 
ed
The Lord of the Rings trilogy and after watching the movies, I was
dumbfounded as to how perfectly the movies depicted the content in the books
and made me view the aspects of the book
in a different light.” 
